Sun­day in Paris

OK, this is ridicu­lous. I’m get­ting my knick­ers all in a twist over my writ­ing class today. “Cre­at­ing Fic­tion,” it’s called. Why does that car­ry with it the knell of doom? I don’t have any trou­ble “Cre­at­ing Non­fic­tion.” I have slaved for WEEKS on these pre­cious 2500 words that I’m meant to be read­ing aloud in three hours to twen­ty hyper­crit­i­cal class­mates. Well, guess how long yes­ter­day’s post was to this dar­ling blog? 2250 words. And read­ers, I assure you I did not slave over it. What makes fic­tion so much hard­er? I’ll let you know how it goes.

Sun­day night in Paris found us all com­plete­ly exhaust­ed! Sarah’s hap­py hour rest­ing turned out to be an Hour From Hell lis­ten­ing to the girls play their annoy­ing Nin­ten­dog, with what­ev­er lit­tle beeps and blips and lit­tle bark­ing sounds accom­pa­ny it, so she had been rode hard and put away wet by the time we met up and was sore­ly in need of a demi-bouteille de vin rouge. I laid our case before the concierge. We want­ed a din­ner out that was charm­ing, authen­tic, kid-friend­ly and close by. “But of course,” he purred, “the Brasserie Balzar is what you want. Just around the cor­ner,” and he gave us tres short direc­tions to this lit­tle spot. Sarah and I looked at the girls, slumped in their chairs in the lob­by, and looked at each oth­er. “Let’s just see for our­selves how close it is, and come right back,” she said, so we exhort­ed the girls to stay put and ran out. Sure enough, it was lit­er­al­ly around the cor­ner, and we stopped to study the menu. A man appeared at my shoul­der. He looked both of us up and down and then said, in French, “Would you like to come in and have a drink with me?” I almost, but not quite, burst out laugh­ing. “Non mer­ci,” I said, and Sarah sur­faced. “What was that about?” “We just got propo­si­tioned,” I said. We looked at each oth­er. Final­ly Sarah said, “Let’s tell him we changed our minds, and we’ll just run get our chil­dren and be with him in two sec­onds. That’ll teach him.”

Ten min­utes lat­er we were hap­pi­ly set­tled at a typ­i­cal French din­ner table cov­ered with heavy white linen, not so hap­pi­ly sur­round­ed by smok­ing din­ers, the only com­plaint we could make about the dar­ling restau­rant. I did not real­ize that the typ­i­cal French brasserie, some­where in between a fan­cy restau­rant and a bistro, was an endan­gered species. Not that it’s going to dis­ap­pear, but that it’s going to be tak­en over by a chain of big­ger restau­rants and slow­ly go in the direc­tion the entire world seems to be going: big­ger and all alike. So we were hap­py that even though Balzar had in fact become part of a big­ger restau­rant group called Flo, it retained all the beau­ty, exper­tise and charm of its sistren through­out the city. Wait­ers bal­anc­ing untold lay­ers of plates climb­ing up their arms, their faces sport­ing han­dle­bar mous­tach­es, lots of pot­ted palms and foxy mir­rors tilt­ed from the wall to afford din­ers the best pos­si­ble view of every­one com­ing and going, a swing­ing kitchen door that threat­ened to top­ple every wait­er who came in or out but nev­er did. And inter­est­ing din­ers. A very ele­gant sin­gle lady next to us with her half-bot­tle of Cotes du Rhone, a nice gay Amer­i­can cou­ple on the oth­er side speak­ing flu­ent French with the wait­er, lots of Frenchy peo­ple smok­ing like chim­neys. Ours were the only chil­dren and they were prop­er­ly subdued.

Because we don’t get it to eat it at home any­more (unless cute­ness-protest­ing Avery is away), I ordered lamb. Gor­geous thin salty chops, not too Frenched, so there was still a bit of gnaw­able crispy fat left on the bones, for me and for Eve, while Avery had one more coeur de rum­steck, and we all had pommes de terre purees; why are they so much yum­mi­er than ordi­nary mashed pota­toes? Again, is it just atmos­phere? But the true star of the evening was Sarah’s steak tartare. For some rea­son I am always a suck­er for raw what­ev­er: I love the Kore­an dish of ground raw beef with a gar­nish of pear and mush­room slices and a quail’s egg bro­ken deli­cious­ly over the top, or sashi­mi of tuna with a nice spicy dress­ing on a bed of greens. This was an indis­put­ed mas­ter­piece of fresh­ness, a per­fect bal­ance of fla­vors, and most mys­te­ri­ous­ly, the supreme tex­ture of hand-chopped meat. I have to admit that I came home and tried mak­ing it the oth­er night, and while it was fine, good qual­i­ty, looked nice, it was noth­ing com­pared to the Brasserie Balzar. We iden­ti­fied the usu­al ingre­di­ents: capers, scal­lions, tabas­co, all per­fect­ly mixed with the chopped filet mignon. Sim­ply sub­lime. Cold, cold, cold of course, on a chilled plate. It was a large por­tion, so my friend­ship with Sarah was not com­pro­mised by my fork’s lit­tle voy­ages to her plate. Oh la la.

Back to the hotel where we hung around the lob­by try­ing to decide what to do the next day, ask­ing the advice of the two concierges where we could pos­si­bly find shoes for Avery, whose feet had mys­te­ri­ous­ly grown out of her shoes over the course of the day. As we dick­ered, the girls played lit­tle games with the tiny col­ored lights adorn­ing the floor of the lob­by. One mys­te­ri­ous­ly turned from red to green to off with unpre­dictable fre­quen­cy, caus­ing much to-do for our detail-ori­ent­ed chil­dren. Final­ly they decid­ed they had to alert the concierge to this flaw in his oth­er­wise per­fect­ly-oiled machine of a hotel. Now, Avery, while not pos­sessed of what I would call even a min­i­mal grasp of the French lan­guage, has nonethe­less a rock-sol­id mem­o­ry. So it was but the work of a moment to teach her to say “Par­don­nez-moi, mon­sieur, mais quelques uns de vos lumieres ne marchent pas,” mean­ing, “I’m sor­ry, sir, but some of your lights are not work­ing.” And because she is a per­fect mim­ic, her accent was spot on. He looked down grave­ly at her and said, “That is to give you some­thing to think about, lit­tle one.”

Anoth­er per­fect­ly cozy night in our lit­tle beds, except for one small thing: we woke up with mos­qui­to bites on our hands and faces! I think they came from the love­ly foun­tains out­side the hotel, which must get switched off dur­ing the night and pro­vide a per­fect bed for bugs. Ah well. We met up with Eve and Sarah, they head­ed to the post office for post­card stamps, and I checked out of the hotel. Thence to the Ile St. Louis, a part of Paris I had nev­er vis­it­ed dur­ing my times there, since it con­tained no art his­to­ry libraries. Isn’t that pathet­ic? But Sarah, being an adult with­out a mis­sion except hav­ing fun, had tracked down this beau­ti­ful area and in par­tic­u­lar the rue Saint-Louis-en-Ile, a gor­geous tiny road lined on both sides with pur­vey­ors of fine food prod­ucts. So we ambled up the street, tak­ing in olive stores, ice cream stores, a choco­late store called Cacao et Choco­lat where we came away with gor­geous choco­late pil­lows made with sea salt, so not too sweet for me. And a beau­ti­ful epicerie, or spice shop, called odd­ly enough l’Epicerie where I bought some fish spices for my moth­er in law, some rasp­ber­ry-flavoured sug­ar for Avery’s break­fast toast, and for me, because I could­n’t resist the dar­ling lit­tle cans, a con­tain­er of mousse d’homard which will either be deli­cious because it’s lob­ster or degoulasse because it’s all been mashed up and put into a tiny tin.

Final­ly, how­ev­er, it was time for Eve and Sarah to head off to the air­port, so we part­ed sad­ly out­side Notre Dame with many promis­es to meet up in Lon­don soon. Eve and Avery have made fast friends, so I don’t think there will be any prob­lem con­vinc­ing them to trav­el wher­ev­er it takes, to have anoth­er adven­ture. The per­fect trav­el­ing companions!

To dis­tract our­selves from both our sad­ness at part­ing from them and Avery’s itchy mos­qui­to bites, we dipped into Notre Dame, just for a glimpse of the impos­ing facade, a nice short lec­ture on one of my favorite archi­tec­tur­al ele­ments, the “fly­ing but­tress,” and a look at the gor­geous stained glass inside. We lit a can­dle to what­ev­er cause Avery had in mind (prob­a­bly some­thing to do with a French pony), and ducked back out again. Not exact­ly the semes­ter-long lec­ture course on the church that I remem­ber sit­ting through in grad­u­ate school, but hey, she’s ten years old. Time enough to bore her to death in future years. It was time to SHOP. We jumped in a taxi and took the most scenic route you can imag­ine, along the rue du Riv­o­li, past the Opera House, to the Galeries Lafayette, a ridicu­lous­ly enor­mous and elab­o­rate depart­ment store. I think it’s sort of the Saks, or the Har­rods, of Paris. It reminds me of the huge depart­ment store GUM in Moscow, where were used to wan­der around in 1991, still sport­ing its Art Nou­veau archi­tec­tur­al glo­ry, but emp­ty of any­thing to sell. Well, Galeries Lafayettes has plen­ty to sell! Just ridicu­lous. How­ev­er, we made a bee­line for the chil­dren’s shoe depart­ment and, an hour or so lat­er, emerged with a dar­ling pair of bal­le­ri­na slip­pers and a cute pair of knee-length boots. It turns out to be sur­pris­ing­ly dif­fi­cult to explain “nar­row feet” in French, as well as “no, no laces please, nor Vel­cro,” but we pulled it off. It was actu­al­ly a lot of fun to accom­plish, and I came away with a whole new set of vocab­u­lary words as well as a renewed respect for the sub­junc­tive and the con­di­tion­al and oth­er gram­mat­i­cal conun­dra that I had for­got­ten since about 1986.

We tried and tried to find some­thing for me, but I get very eas­i­ly flum­moxed and feel­ing all Social­ist when con­front­ed with a great deal of expen­sive mer­chan­dise. We had almost giv­en up when the agnes b shop pre­sent­ed itself, and no mat­ter that I pass the shop here in Lon­don on the way home from Avery’s school every sin­gle day and have nev­er gone in: no, this time I found the per­fect, per­fect lit­tle short brown skirt, and a cardi­gan with lit­tle knit­ted thingys that fit over my thumb! I changed into them and came out feel­ing quite French. We smiled at each oth­er in mutu­al sat­is­fac­tion, and head­ed out, back down the rue du Riv­o­li, to Brentano’s, the great French-Eng­lish book­store where I spent a lot of time my last trip around Paris. “Oh my good­ness, the last book in the “Series of Unfor­tu­nate Events” is out!” Avery gasped. Nat­u­ral­ly, we would buy this in Paris. We col­lapsed at a side­walk cafe to have some lunch and I cru­el­ly did not allow Avery to read, oth­er­wise she would run out of books for the train ride home. We shared an incred­i­ble plat­ter of smoked salmon and foie gras, with per­fect toast, and I felt very sad that I was leav­ing a city where the most ordi­nary of food estab­lish­ments offers up some­thing so supe­ri­or to any­thing either Lon­don or New York can aspire to. How is that?

Back to say good­bye to the hotel and col­lect our incred­i­bly enlarged bag­gage, in a taxi ride that took us down the Quai de la Megis­serie, pos­si­bly the strangest street I have ever seen. Why would one par­tic­u­lar street con­tain all the city’s col­lec­tion of both gar­den cen­ters and pet shops? Hon­est­ly, one after anoth­er, jar­dinieres and mag­a­sins aux ani­maux, with cages full of par­rots adorn­ing the side­walk in front of one shop, and then next door to it a mot­ley assort­ment of gar­den gnomes. I’m none the wis­er for look­ing up “megis­serie” in the dic­tio­nary and find­ing that it means “taw­ing, or leather-dress­ing.” Hmmm. Of course, New York has its flower dis­trict, and Lon­don has its book­shop dis­trict, but pets and plants togeth­er? Just anoth­er indi­ca­tion of how Paris dogged­ly main­tains its idio­syn­cra­cies. I like that.

And off we were to the train sta­tion, and through immi­gra­tion. The Eng­lish pass­port chap gave us the usu­al skep­ti­cal “why do you have two dif­fer­ent last names” scruti­ny, asked what my hus­band did in Lon­don. “He works for Reuters Amer­i­ca,” I said patient­ly. “And you believe him? Would you trust him if he told you he worked for Reuters Uzbek­istan?” he asked. “I’m not a very trust­ing per­son,” I told him, and for what­ev­er rea­son, it worked. We got in the train, stowed away our belong­ings, and set­tled down for a return to… nor­mal life. But I must admit, nor­mal life isn’t too dread­ful when it means being met at the train sta­tion in Lon­don by John in our dar­ling Mini Coop­er, and being dri­ven home in the nice fog­gy dusk past the Hous­es of Par­lia­ment, Big Ben, Buck­ing­ham Palace, Hyde Park. Not too dread­ful at all.